In 1983, a twenty-four-year-old Algerian named Abdullah Anas took the bus from his native village of Ben Badis to the market town of Sidi Bel Abbиs, where there was a newsstand, so that he could catch up on world events.³² Anas had been one of the founders of the Islamist movement in western Algeria, and he continued to follow political developments in the Islamic world with great interest. On that day, Anas remembered buying a copy of a Kuwaiti magazine that had captured his attention with a fatwa (legal opinion by Islamic scholars) signed by a number of religious scholars. It declared that support for the jihad in Afghanistan was a personal duty for all Muslims. Anas went to a nearby coffee house and settled down to read the fatwa in detail. He was impressed by the long list of famous clerics who had signed the declaration, including leading muftis from the Arab Gulf states and Egypt. One name in particular stood out: Shaykh Abdullah ’Azzam, whose publications and tape-recorded sermons circulated widely in Islamist circles. Born to a conservative religious family in a village near the Palestinian town of Jenin in 1941, Abdullah ‘Azzam had joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a teenager in the mid-1950s.³³ After completing his high school studies, he went on to study Islamic law at the University of Damascus. Following the June 1967 War, ’Azzam spent a year and a half fighting against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank in what he called his “Palestinian jihad.” He then moved to Cairo, where he took his masters and doctorate from al-Azhar University. While in Egypt, ’Azzam came to know Muhammad and Amina Qutb, the brother and sister of the late Sayyid Qutb, who had been executed by Nasser’s government in 1966. ’Azzam was profoundly influenced by the writings of Qutb. With his academic credentials, ’Azzam joined the faculty of Islamic studies at the University of Jordan in Amman, where he taught for seven years before his inflammatory publications and sermons landed him in trouble with the Jordanian authorities. He left Jordan for Saudi Arabia in 1980, taking a post at the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. Just before ‘Azzam moved to Jeddah, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. The Communist government in Afghanistan and its Soviet ally had proven their hostility to Islam, and the Afghans were fighting “in the path of God.” ’Azzam gave their cause his full support, confident that victory in Afghanistan would revive the spirit of jihad in Islam. As his later writings attest, ’Azzam saw victory in Afghanistan as a way to mobilize Muslims to action in other conflict zones. A native of Palestine, he saw Afghanistan as the training ground for future action against Israel. “Do not think we forget Palestine,” he wrote:Liberating Palestine is an integral part of our religion. It is in our blood. We never forget Palestine. But I am certain that working in Afghanistan constitutes a revival of the spirit of jihad and a renewal of allegiance to God, no matter how great the sacrifices are. We have been deprived from waging jihad in Palestine because of the borders, restraints and prisons. But this doesn’t mean that we abandon jihad. It does not mean either that we have forgotten our country. We must prepare for jihad in any spot of the earth we can.³⁴

’Azzam’s message of jihad and sacrifice gained wide circulation both through his writings and recordings of his fiery sermons. He awakened the spirit of jihad in Muslim men across the world, reaching even remote market towns like Sidi Bel Abbиs in Algeria. The more Anas read the text of the fatwa ’Azzam had signed, and weighed its arguments, the more he was convinced that Afghanistan’s fight against Soviet occupation was the responsibility of all Muslims. “If a stretch of Muslim territory is attacked, jihad is an individual duty for those who inhabit that territory and those who are neighbours,” the fatwa asserted. “If there are too few of them, or if they are incapable or reticent, then this duty is incumbent upon those who are nearby, and so on until it spreads throughout the world.”³⁵ Given the gravity of the situation in Afghanistan, Anas felt that the duty of jihad had reached him in rural Algeria. This was all the more remarkable for, as Anas confessed, he didn’t know a thing about Afghanistan at the time—he couldn’t even place it on the map. As Anas would soon learn, Afghanistan is a country of rich cultural diversity and a tragic modern history. Its population is composed of seven main ethnic groups, the largest of which are the Pashtun (roughly 40 percent of the population) and the Tajiks (30 percent), with a Sunni Muslim majority, a large Shiite minority, and two official languages (Persian and Pashto). The country’s diversity reflects its geographic location, situated between Iran in the west, Pakistan to the south and east, and China and the (then Soviet) Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to the north. Diversity and geography have not afforded much stability to land-locked Afghanistan, and since 1973 the country has been wracked with political turmoil and wars. The origins of the Soviet-Afghan war date to the 1973 military coup that toppled the monarchy of King Zahir Shah and brought a left-leaning government to power. The republican regime of President Mohammed Daoud Khan was in turn toppled by a violent Communist coup in April 1978. The Communists declared the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, a single-party state allied to the Soviet Union, bent on rapid social and economic reforms. The new Afghan government was openly hostile to Islam and promoted state atheism, provoking widespread opposition within the largely religious Afghan population. With Soviet backing, the Communist regime instigated a reign of terror against all opponents, arresting and executing thousands of political prisoners. However, the ruling Communists were themselves split by factionalism and succumbed to in-fighting. After a spate of assassinations, the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979, sending an invasion force of 25,000 men to secure the capital city of Kabul and to install its Afghan ally Babrak Karmal as president. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan provoked international condemnation, but no country was in a position to intervene directly to force a Soviet withdrawal. It fell to the Afghan resistance movements to repel the Red Army, and the Islamist parties led the fight. They received extensive covert assistance from the United States, which saw the conflict strictly in Cold War terms, in which the anticommunism of the Islamist fighters made them natural allies against the Soviets. The United States provided the Afghan resistance with military supplies and sophisticated hand-fired antiaircraft missiles through Pakistan. During the Carter administration, the United States gave some $200 million in aid to the Afghan resistance. Ronald Reagan stepped up American support, providing $250 million in assistance in 1985 alone.³⁶ The government of Pakistan served as an intermediary between the Americans and the Afghan resistance and aided with intelligence and training facilities for the Afghan mujahidin (literally, “holy warriors,” Islamic guerrillas). The Islamic world provided significant financial assistance and, starting in 1983, began to recruit volunteers to fight in the Afghan jihad. Abdullah ‘Azzam led the call to recruit Arab volunteers to fight in Afghanistan, and Abdullah Anas was one of the first to respond. The two men met by chance while on pilgrimage in Mecca in 1983. Among the millions who gathered for the rituals of the pilgrimage, Anas recognized the distinctive face of Abdullah ’Azzam, with his long beard and broad face, and went up to introduce himself. “I read the fatwa that you and a group of clerics published on the duty of jihad in Afghanistan, and I am convinced by it, but I don’t know how to get to Afghanistan,” Anas said. “It is very simple,” ’Azzam replied. “This is my telephone number in Islamabad. I will return to Pakistan at the end of the Hajj. If you get there, call me and I will take you to our Afghan colleagues in Peshawar.”³⁷ Within two weeks, Anas was on a plane to Islamabad. Never having been outside the Arab world, the young Algerian was disoriented in Pakistan. He went straight to a public telephone and was relieved when ‘Azzam answered and invited him over for dinner. ?He received me with a human warmth that touched me,? Anas recalled. Welcoming Anas into his home, ?Azzam introduced him to his other dinner guests. ?His house was full of the students he taught in the International Islamic University in Islamabad. He asked me to stay with him until he went to Peshawar because I would not be able to meet with the Afghan colleagues if I went to Peshawar on my own.? Anas spent three days as a guest in ‘Azzam’s home. It was the beginning of a profound friendship and political partnership, sealed when Anas later married ’Azzam’s daughter. While at ‘Azzam’s home, Anas got to meet the first of the Arab men to respond to ’Azzam’s call to volunteer for the Afghan jihad. There were no more than a dozen Arab volunteers in the Afghan jihad when Anas arrived in 1983. Before their departure for Peshawar, ’Azzam introduce Anas to another Arab volunteer. “I present you Brother Osama bin Ladin,” ’Azzam said by way of introduction. “He is one of the Saudi youths who love the Afghan jihad.” “He struck me as very shy, a man of few words,” Anas recollected. “Shaykh Abdullah explained that Osama visited him from time to time in Islamabad.” Anas did not get to know bin Ladin well, as they served in different parts of Afghanistan. But he never forgot that first encounter.³⁸ While still in Pakistan, Anas was sent with two other Arab volunteers to a training camp. Having done his national service in Algeria, he was already proficient with a Kalashnikov submachine gun. After two months, the volunteers were given their first opportunity to enter Afghanistan. Before they set off from their camp in Pakistan to join the Afghan mujahidin, ‘Azzam explained to his Arab protйgйs that the Afghan resistance was divided into seven factions. The largest were the Pashtun-dominated Hezb-e Islami (the Islamic Party) of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the Jamiat-e Islami (the Islamic Society) headed by the Tajik Burhanuddin Rabbani. ’Azzam warned the Arab volunteers to avoid taking sides in Afghan factionalism and to see themselves as “guests of the entire Afghan people.” Yet as the Arabs volunteered for service in the different Afghan provinces, they came under the command of specific parties and inevitably gave their loyalty to the men with whom they served. Anas volunteered to serve in the northern province of Mazar-e Sharif, under the command of Rabbani’s men of the Jamiat-e Islami. The handful of Arab volunteers set off with their Afghan commanders in the depth of winter, crossing territory under Soviet control, in a caravan of 300 armed men, all on foot. The perilous journey took forty days. Once he reached Mazar-e Sharif, Anas was discouraged by his first experiences of the Afghan jihad. The local commander in Mazar had just died in a suicide operation against the Soviets, and three of his subordinates were vying with one another to control the resistance forces in the strategic town. Anas recognized he was out of his depth. ?We were young men with no information, training or money,? Anas wrote of himself and the two other Arabs who were with him on the journey. ?I realized that participation in the jihad required a much higher standard [of preparation] than we had reached.? Within a month of his arrival in Mazar, Anas decided to leave the “explosive situation” and return to Peshawar as soon as possible. His first impression of Afghanistan was that its problems were too big to be solved by a handful of well-intentioned volunteers. “Inevitably the Islamic world would have to be called upon to assume its responsibility. The Afghan problem is bigger than five Arab men, or twenty-five Arabs or fifty Arabs.” He believed it was essential to brief Abdullah ’Azzam of the political situation inside Afghanistan “so that he could present the situation to the Arab and Islamic worlds, and request more assistance for the Afghan problem.”³⁹